


Faint Heart Never Won

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Lucifer (Comic)
Genre: Chivalry, Choices, F/M, Free Will, Misses Clause Challenge, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:43:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer does not need her to defend him, but that is irrelevant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faint Heart Never Won

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivyspinners](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/gifts).



> A quick little Mazikeen/Lucifer fic, because I love them too! Sorry I didn't have the time to write something longer. :-/

Lucifer does not need her to defend him, but that is irrelevant. Mazikeen chose, of her own free will, to give her life and service to her lord; therefore she will guard him to her death and beyond. If naught else, she can clear his days of petty annoyances that might sour his mood, or sweep aside minor obstacles that might delay his plans.

He does not understand her choice, does not understand how she can bend her desires, her needs, to his, while her will yet remains her own. In this one thing, she finds his limits. He cannot bend. He must be master -- be lord, king, god -- or be nothing. There is no middle way, no color to brighten the stark black, white, gray of his eternal life. Not even his flames, which bring both death and life and see no contradiction, can show him the exit from his maze.

This, then, is her service: to teach him that love is never surrender. That creation is stronger than negation. That every being's choices remain their own, whether or not they serve another's purpose, whether or not they were foreseen.

She will leave him when she must, to follow her own will, but she will always return. She chooses to return. She chooses to be his sword, his knight, his queen.

She thinks, for a time, she has won. But events work against her. To save the few places and people who have touched him enough to matter, he reworks the universe, hands its clockwork heart to his niece and installs her on his father's throne. And though he favors Elaine Belloc, has taught her all she knows, he can no more serve her than he could serve God.

Lucifer hurls himself into nothing.

But he leaves his flames to Mazikeen. They burn, with each second and each breath, as if her heart is woven from the essence of every star that ever lived and ever might. She cannot credit that her flesh can hold that vastness, that inferno; she thinks it might drive out everything but power and the will to hold it in.

She wonders if that happened to him, if that might explain--

She stops those thoughts before they flower. Lucifer made his choices, of his own free will. She will not take that away from him, no matter that she wishes the outcome had been different. She loved with all her heart, served with all her strength, and if that was not enough, the failure was not hers.

Mazikeen left her marks on his heart and on his face. He wore them when he walked out of God's creation. If anything of him remains, beyond the walls of the universe, he will wear them still.

Lucifer rejected the world.

He did not reject her.


End file.
